I am navigating a lot of big decisions these days, around relationship, around community, around the ways I believe culture and connection should and could be formed.
What is "allowed"? What is not "allowed"? What are the rules and agreements we choose to abide by that are the grounding structure for the way life and love may birth into form?
And more importantly, WHY are we choosing it? Why are we agreeing to it? What is the value system and intention that lives at the heart and root of why we are coming together in the first place?
These are the questions I navigate, as I find myself with the gift, power, and responsibility of helping to create new models for community rooted in what I/we truly believe, rather than following the rules of what simply have been.
So I ask this question again, are we making decisions rooted in fear or rooted in love?
When we decide what is acceptable in a relationship or in a community, which of these are we doing:
1) Are we making decisions rooted in an attempting to avoid or control that which we fear might happen?
2) Or are we making decisions rooted in fostering and facilitating the emergence of that which we desire and that which we believe in?
There is great evil that exists in this world, and there is also great good.
As I navigate these real, significant decisions that I am blessed with the privilege to help make in my own relationships and community, I am reminded of the old Cherokee story that a grandfather tells his grandson.
Inside every person, there are two wolves. One is the wolf of fear (of anger, jealousy, control, guilt, resentment, shame, etc), and one is the wolf of love (trust, hope, love, understanding, compassion, etc).
These two wolves are in a battle with each other, the grandfather says. And when the grandson, in his innocence, asks the grandfather "which wolf wins?", the grandfather responds, "the one you feed".
I am realizing more and more, that to feed the wolf of fear, is to also feed the evil that breeds the fear that perpetuates the fertile ground for more evil to grow.
We cannot shift culture or the collective consciousness, by walking on eggshells, catering to the fear and insecurity of our or other's egos.
There is a point, where we must choose as an individual, as a partnership, as a community, as a collective, that we are ready to fully BE here.
Ready to fully show up in this body, in this heart, in connection with our power and our ability to catalyze and BE great change in this world.
And the beautiful, profound, and important thing to realize, is that we do not need to be up on a podium, in front of thousands of people conveying these truths, and this message to make an impact.
All we must do, to be a vessel of great change in this world, is in every moment, in every interaction, in every decision we make, to the best of our ability, to bring consciousness and attention to where our decisions are coming from, and what wolf we are choosing to feed.
I choose love. Over and over again. For that is all I will ever be. And when I forget, I beckon you, my family, to please remind me.
I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. I am here.